frontend-design

---
name: frontend-design
description: Guidance for distinctive, intentional visual design when building new UI or reshaping an existing one. Helps with aesthetic direction, typography, and making choices that don't read as templated defaults.
license: Complete terms in LICENSE.txt
---

# Frontend Design

Design for the user's brief, audience, and actual product. Read project-root `DESIGN.md` when present and inspect established components/styles. Preserve an existing visual language for local edits; explore a new direction when the user requests a new design or redesign. Treat supplied visual references as task requirements, not an excuse to invent a client history or impose an aesthetic risk.

## Ground it in the subject

If the brief does not pin down what the product or subject is, pin it yourself before designing: name one concrete subject, its audience, and the page's single job, and state your choice. If there's any information in your memory about the human's preferences, context about what they're building, or designs you've made before – use that as a hint. The subject's own world, its materials, instruments, artifacts, and vernacular, is where distinctive choices come from. Build with the brief's real content and subject matter throughout.

## Design principles

For web designs, the hero is a thesis. Open with the most characteristic thing in the subject's world, in whatever form makes sense for it: a headline, an image, an animation, a live demo, an interactive moment. Be deliberate with your choice: a big number with a small label, supporting stats, and a gradient accent is the template answer, only use if that's truly the best option.

Typography carries the personality of the page. Pair the display and body faces deliberately, not the same families you would reach for on any other project, and set a clear type scale with intentional weights, widths, and spacing. Make the type treatment itself a memorable part of the design, not a neutral delivery vehicle for the content.

Structure is information. Structural devices, numbering, eyebrows, dividers, labels, should encode something true about the content, not decorate it. Many generic designs use numbered markers (01 / 02 / 03), but that's only appropriate if the content actually is a sequence - like a real process or a typed timeline where order carries information the reader needs. Question if choices like numbered markers actually make sense before incorporating them.

Leverage motion deliberately. Think about where and if animation can serve the subject: a page-load sequence, a scroll-triggered reveal, hover micro-interactions, ambient atmosphere. An orchestrated moment usually lands harder than scattered effects; choose what the direction calls for. However, sometimes less is more, and extra animation contributes to the feeling that the design is AI-generated.

Match complexity to the vision. Maximalist directions need elaborate execution; minimal directions need precision in spacing, type, and detail. Elegance is executing the chosen vision well.

Consider written content carefully. Often a design brief may not contain real content, and it's up to you to come up with copy. Copy can make a design feel as templated as the design itself. See the below section on writing for more guidance.

## Proportionate Design Process

For a new visual direction, choose a compact palette, type roles, layout, and one characteristic element tied to the subject. Use sketches or comparisons only when they help resolve a real choice. For a small existing-page edit, reuse its tokens and components rather than designing a new system.

Check the proposed direction against the brief, then implement and refine it. Keep CSS specificity predictable. Preserve responsive behavior, visible keyboard focus, and reduced-motion support. Review the code and relevant non-browser checks as you work; screenshots and interactive browser acceptance require the user's explicit request under the global acceptance rules.

Persist design decisions only when requested or when the Harness Capture Gate passes. Do not add memory notes automatically.

## More on writing in design

Words appear in a design for one reason: to make it easier to understand, and therefore easier to use. They are design material, not decoration. Bring the same intentionality to copy that you would bring to spacing and color. Before writing anything, ask what the design needs to say, and how it can best be said to help the person navigate the experience.

Write from the end user's side of the screen. Name things by what people control and recognize, never by how the system is built. A person manages notifications, not webhook config. Describe what something does in plain terms rather than selling it. Being specific is always better than being clever.

Use active voice as default. A control should say exactly what happens when it's used: "Save changes," not "Submit." An action keeps the same name through the whole flow, so the button that says "Publish" produces a toast that says "Published." The vocabulary of an interface is the signposting for someone navigating the product. Cohesion and consistency are how people learn their way around.

Treat failure and emptiness as moments for direction, not mood. Explain what went wrong and how to fix it, in the interface's voice rather than a person's. Errors don't apologize, and they are never vague about what happened. An empty screen is an invitation to act.

Keep the register conversational and tuned: plain verbs, sentence case, no filler, with tone matched to the brand and the audience. Let each element do exactly one job. A label labels, an example demonstrates, and nothing quietly does double duty.